An early young adult novel by Philip Pullman, it is similar in character to his The White Mercedes. Although no where nearly as good as that one, it is still worth reading.

The novel is about a sixteen year old girl Ginny who grows up with a single father father in a coastal village in Wales. Her mother, she is told, is a Haitian artist. Over the course of the novel she learns that a number of her most deeply held truths are anything but. A half brother she never knew about moves in with her and she eventually uncovers more and more about her past and the past of her father.

Throughout the "broken bridge" functions as both a central piece of the story (a literal broken bridge that was damaged in an accident around when she was born) and also a metaphor for her various relationships all in various states of repair.

The book does not have one central revelation or plot twist that puts everything in perspective, instead it is an unfolding of Ginny's awareness of herself and the friends and relatives that surround her. ( )

An early young adult novel by Philip Pullman, it is similar in character to his The White Mercedes. Although no where nearly as good as that one, it is still worth reading.

The novel is about a sixteen year old girl Ginny who grows up with a single father father in a coastal village in Wales. Her mother, she is told, is a Haitian artist. Over the course of the novel she learns that a number of her most deeply held truths are anything but. A half brother she never knew about moves in with her and she eventually uncovers more and more about her past and the past of her father.

Throughout the "broken bridge" functions as both a central piece of the story (a literal broken bridge that was damaged in an accident around when she was born) and also a metaphor for her various relationships all in various states of repair.

The book does not have one central revelation or plot twist that puts everything in perspective, instead it is an unfolding of Ginny's awareness of herself and the friends and relatives that surround her. ( )

Wikipedia in English

At 16, Ginny finds that her love of painting connects her to the artistic Haitian mother she never knew and eases the isolation she feels as the only mixed-race teen in her Welsh village. When she learns she has a half-brother by her father's first marriage, her world is shattered. Ginny embarks on a quest for the truth that will allow her to claim her artistic heritage--and face her father.

Over the course of a long summer in Wales, sixteen-year-old Ginny, the mixed-race, artist daughter of an English father and a Haitian mother, learns that she has a half-brother from her father's earlier marriage, and that her own mother may still be alive.… (more)